Show me a hero and i'll write you a tragedy
by Somebody Once
Summary: Post 522. "If this normal apple pie world is what Sam died for then what a waste, what a colossal waste of the best human being Dean has ever known."


**Warnings:** Some swearing

**Authors Note:** Um...what a finale, that was the best episode ever for me, just angsty and cliffhanger full and the acting was phenomenal. Anyway there has been about 1o,ooo 522 cods already most that are far better than mine but I really felt the need to write a bit. This may be a one shot but i might very well continue it because i love angst. It's bizarre writing for Dean because i'm pretty much a Samgirl to the death and he has always come more naturally to me but its Dean i wanted to explore a little here. Anyway i really hope you like it.

* * *

When Lisa closes the door and brings him in the first thing she does is pull out a bottle of whisky and lets him just sit for a while. She's patient sitting next to him arms in her lap unsure whether she'll need to anchor him or watch him fall apart, unsure of this man who she thinks she has pretty strong feelings for but she knows is probably the worst danger she could bring into her home.

Dean means a lot to her but Ben means more and she's sitting nervously wondering what it means that the man she could quite possibly fall for is sitting on her couch looking like the entire world just ended,. Last time she'd seen him he'd left her with the most ominous of feelings and some hastily uttered warning about how he had to do this and how things were going to be bad but she'd be ok, he'd see to that. She had spent the last weeks watching every news report on tv, walking Ben to the actual classroom door before she'd let him out of her sight for a second, waiting, waiting, waiting. But then nothing, then a knock at the door and Dean. And it's kind of crazy just how much that scares her more.

Dean sits still as a statue staring like he's not seeing her. Something's happened, she knows something's happened. She also thinks it probably has something to do with his absent brother, but then Sam hadn't been with him last time either. But she's no fool, and something must have happened to knock Dean this bad.

'Do you want to tell me what happened?' She offers finally after the staring starts to really scare her.

The myriad of emotions that cross his face at that moment are too hard to decipher. He looks like he wants to say something, say anything of real value but all he finally manages is 'No'.

She sighs. If that's how he wants to be, closed off, walls up again then she'll let him for now. This is a side to him she's never seen, not if she admits to herself, that she knows him all that well, I mean hell it had been a weekend of amazing sex when they were kids, followed by him saving her little boy and stealing her heart a little but she wasn't going to pretend she knew him, heck she didn't even think she'd really scratched the surface of who Dean Winchester was.

Dean burns a hole in the glass with his eyes and she watches as he turns it and turns it around and around in his weatherbeaten palms. His nails are dirty like he's been digging at something, like he's been working with the ground and she wonders for the hundredth time since he showed up at her front door what the fuck has happened to this man. His thumb is bloody and leaving tiny imprints on the glass. If she looks closer his hands are shaking, tiny, minute little vibrations barely noticeable but there. Lisa's seen those hands hold a gun without so much as a tremor and now with a glass they are shaking and shaking and they won't stop. The shakes become more pronounced and she decides to intervene before the near gone whiskey ends up over her floor.

She takes it out of his hand.

'There are clean towels in the linen closet, upstairs, turn left, second door. Go get yourself a shower ' he barely acknowledges her just stares down at his hands bereft now without the glass. 'And when you're ready to talk I'm here. I'm right here Dean'.

He nods, pulls himself to his feet like he's 1oo years old not 31 'I didn't…I don't…' His eyes finally find their way to hers and he looks so tortured, so wrecked that she just wants to hold him all over again, 'I made a promise' is all he says finally.

She has no idea what he means by that, nor why it sounds like the worst thing in the world to him but she nods just the same. 'Ok.' She says finally. 'Ok then.'

* * *

The shower is one of those fancy things that looks bigger than some of the motel rooms they've stayed in and Dean dumps his clothes on the pristine white tiles and stands there like an idiot with no idea how to turn the damn thing on. He's not good at this, he doesn't know how to turn this on, doesn't know how these fancy surburban showers work. Finally he manages to twist three dials and the water comes on freezing. He doesn't bother turning it up. He stands there.

He stands there.

It's like he's dreaming, like he's in some weird ridiculous dream where he's got his little slice of suburbia, got the girl and the kid and the freaking power shower and he knows, he just knows that in a minute he's going to wake up and Sam's going to be stood there coffee in one hand and some newspaper with a case in the other and his stupid floppy hair is going to be in his stupid girly puppy dog eyes and he's going to look at Dean with that stupid, stupid mix of exasperation and affection and he's going to say 'morning sunshine' That's what's going to happen right? He knows it is. This dream's just taking a little longer than most that's all. Because no world that the two of them had worked so hard to save would be cruel enough to leave him alone in it. It just wouldn't right?

The water is a dull roar in his ears and Dean leans his forehead against the stupid, stupid mosaic tiles and fuck it he thinks he might be crying. His hands are braced against the shower wall and they do fuck all when his knees give out.

He sits there like an idiot. He just sits there. What happened? What happened? How did this happen? It takes him several seconds to realise he's banging his head against the shower wall so hard he's drawn blood. It should hurt shouldn't it? He should feel something. Through his stupid fucking ridiculous tears the ruby red stain on his fingers is visible and he shudders. Blood. Blood, on Sam's knuckles, coming at him again and again and again but he dealt with that because they were together you see him and Sam, they were together even with this sickening inhabitor raping his brother's body and mind, they were still together at the end. Wasn't that the way it was supposed to go?

Of course it was. 'It's supposed to be you and me against the world' 'Dean, it IS!'

Well fuck that, fuck that and fuck Sam. Stupid fucking liar Sam and his stupid, stupid plan. Selfish, suicidal little bitch. Dean is suddenly so freaking angry at Sam he could scream. What gave him the right to up and leave him again, what gave him the right to condemn Dean to this, what gave him the right to go first. Screw that. Screw it.

He clambers to his feet rage pulsing through every fibre of his body, stupid fucking Sam, stupid fucking shower, stupid fucking normality. He wrenches the shower head from the holder and brings it down repeatedly against the base smashing and smashing and smashing. His body is too big for the cublicle, he feels enclosed and imprisoned and so fucking angry he can't even speak. He just keeps swinging and swinging until the water stops and the shower dials are smashed and at his feet. Shattered porcelain, shattered plastic, twisted mess. 'Fuck you' he shouts, 'FUCK YOU SAM, I HATE YOU FOR THIS.' The water finally dies out, trickle to a complete halt, 'rot in hell!' he spits out 'rot in hell'. And that's what finally does it , what finally breaks him.

Hell? No! and oh god Sammy, oh god, please don't rot in hell, oh god please, please.

He falls, he falls down to the floor, cutting his legs on shards of plastic. I'm sorry, I'm sorry I'm sorry, I didn't mean that, I didn't mean it. "Oh Sam…" He buries his face in his knees and squeezes his eyes shut, tries not to imagine his baby brother hanging from the rack, tortured and desperate and alone. Oh god all alone. Why did he leave him alone? Why didn't he go into that pit with him, how could he let mom and dad's baby fall into that all by himself. Dean's boy, always Deans' how could he just sit there, just sit there and let him fall?

He hates himself, hates himself. He wants to die. But instead he sits on the floor of a destroyed shower, in fucking Cicero sobbing his heart out like a girl. 'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry Sammy.' And he is, so so sorry, 'I should have saved you, it's my job to save you.'

A long time passes, he sits, naked and frozen wishing he could just die, it's not like he'd even be with his brother then though, no, where Sam is is worse than that, he sure as heck aint in heaven. There's a knock at the door. 'Dean?'

Go away he thinks, let me die.

'Dean'. The door squeaks open and Lisa walks in. Her mouth drops open in a shocked little 'o' at the destruction of her shower but she only has eyes for the huddled figure in the corner.

Dean sits deathly still as she opens the shower door and slides down to hold him, he knows he should apologise, knows he should make some kind of excuse, but he doesn't know what to say. 'I lost Sammy.' He volunteers instead 'I couldn't get to him, I couldn't even get up and he just…I couldn't…I lost him Lis, oh god I lost him'.

Lisa holds him.

* * *

He's in her bed, hair still damp, staring at the wall. She lies pressed against him and rubs his arm trying to comfort a pain she would never, ever even imagine. Dean lost his boy tonight. He's never going to be alright again, never going to be able to live life again without hating every single creature in it for being the reason his brother died. Everything is tainted now, everything. If this normal apple pie world is what Sam died for then what a waste, what a colossal fucking waste of the best human being Dean has ever known. It's all wrong and the injustice of it all makes him want to put a gun in his mouth and get to heaven just so he can rip God a new one for this move.

'I'll fix your bathroom'

Lisa startles slightly not sure if he'd been still awake. 'Dean it doesn't matter…'

'It does matter Lis, you let me into your home and that's how I repay you?' he snorts. 'I'll fix it.'

Tomorrow he'll go buy bathroom fixings and surround himself with seas of faces, with the autonomous, suburban, apple pies of society, he'll ask about showerheads and pressure gauges and he'll try to pretend that at that same exact moment his brother is not being bled dry and mindfucked and tortured in hell.

He bites his lip till it bleeds.

Fuck normality, fuck apple pie, he'll take Sam any and every single day. He's terrified about the way his eyes keep straying to the duffel pocket where he put those rings, the way he can't stop thinking about just letting them all go to ruin and opening his little brothers cell and getting him the fuck out of there. 'Promise me' Sam had said, complete with that bitch face, the one that said he knew damned well he had his big brother wrapped around his finger. 'Promise me'.

This had always been Sam's dream not his. Sam's life ambition, so why is Dean being forced into it? He doesn't want this. Not without Sam. He doesn't want any of it.

Beside him Lisa shifts. 'So listen…' she says a little nervously, 'I've been thinking about your brother'.

Dean stiffens.

'And I figure…god Dean the life you two lived, so much darkness, so much horror, fighting it every single day, never stopping…I mean at least Sam's away from it now.' She plants a kiss against Dean's nape. 'At least he's at peace right?'

Dean doesn't think he'll ever stop laughing.


End file.
